Pelikan M215 Blue Stripe XXXXF Waverly Nib Review

The Waverly nib is a special nib grind designed to make the tip of the nib smoother and more comfortable to write with. There is a slight upturn at the end of the nib, which hopefully you can see in the image above, and turning a standard Pelikan XF nib into something ultra fine with a Waverly grind should provide an excellent result. But it's not for me.

As my possibly flawed logic told me before even putting nib to paper, a Waverly grind should be worse in an XXXXF nib, especially on the horizontal strokes. At least with the way I grip and write with fountain pens. With the nib turned up, the sides of the nib will have a larger contact area on the page than a standard, straight XXXXF grind. Right? Writing with this nib grind confirmed just that.

If I am getting this fine of a nib grind done I want the resulting lines to be fine, sharp, and consistent. None of that happened with this nib. It wrote perfectly fine and was smooth, but the consistency was not there and it seems better suited for wider nib pens. My stock Pilot Vanishing Point EF nib fits my style more by a long shot.

My enabler Thomas loaned me this nib last year and feels similarly. I'd love to hear from anyone else with a Waverly nib grind to get another opinion and see if I am missing something. As it stands now, a standard ultra fine grind is the winner in this scenario.